Lexicon Community

Governance model

Effective 2026-07-26 (as amended) First adopted 2025-03-10 History

The organization

The mission of the Lexicon Community is to create an effective, active blueprint for collective ownership of Lexicons in the ATmosphere (the ecosystem of applications built on the AT Protocol) and build a stable and thoughtful lexicon that can be used by application, system, and SDK developers.

It does so through a partnership between the Technical Steering Committee and the broad AT Protocol community to work on a shared Lexicon and provide infrastructure to support it.

Technical Steering Committee

This project is collectively governed by a Technical Steering Committee (TSC) that has final authority over this project, including:

  • Technical direction
  • Lexicon additions and changes
  • Project governance and process
  • Contribution governance
  • Project infrastructure

The current roster is on the about section of this site.

Working groups

The work of the Lexicon Community starts with working groups. Working groups are self-formed: anyone may form one, TSC members and the community at large alike. No TSC vote or blessing is required to begin.

A working group has one requirement: an objective that is documented and used by the working group to focus the scope of its work. A working group's objective and the produced result do not need to be a finished product, and it is not expected that the produced result will be used as is.

The Technical Steering Committee's authority sits at the end of the process, not the beginning: proposals arrive as pull requests containing lexicon schema additions and changes, and only TSC members may approve them. The burden of judging whether a proposal is sufficient rests with the TSC once the work has been done. This keeps governance out of the way of a community that wants to work rapidly on designing a lexicon.

Lexicon Community follows a consent-seeking decision-making model, on the model of Sociocratic organizations and the IETF.

After a discussion of an agenda item, the moderator goes around each voting party and asks, "Do you have any objection to the proposal?". If a valid objection is raised, the proposal cannot move forward as is, and must be amended until no objections are left. Amendments might include adding trial periods, reducing the scope of the proposal, or further research.

A decision is made when there is no objection left.

Valid objections

In consent-seeking decision-making, valid objections cannot be a matter of personal preference, but must represent a potential harm to the group's purpose or strategy. By raising an objection, a person signals that the current proposal is outside their range of tolerance, and poses a risk they believe the group cannot afford to take.

By not raising an objection, each participant agrees the proposal is:

  • "Good enough for now," moving the Lexicon Community towards its stated objectives.
  • "Safe enough to try," not causing irreparable or disproportionate harm to the Lexicon Community's mission.

Overriding objections

Since each objection is a signal that someone thinks irreparable harm might come to the group's goals, it is paramount that the group listens to objections and deeply tries to understand the reasoning behind them, even when they might not seem to make sense at first.

Overriding an objection should be a last resort, and might by itself harm the goals of the group in the long term. Should it become necessary, an objection can be overridden by majority vote.

Participation and quorum

Technical Steering Committee members put reasonable effort into soliciting time and feedback from other TSC members. A decision carries when at least half of the members who opt to participate in it affirm. Nick Gerakines is the tie-breaker if and when there is a tie.

Meetings

The Technical Steering Committee holds a monthly meeting, scheduled at least one month out, defaulting to 1:00 PM ET on the first Thursday of each month. Each meeting is published as a community.lexicon.calendar.event record — the community's own lexicon, used for its own operations.

TSC members and community contributors can invite guests to the meeting. TSC members reserve the right to refuse entry as described in the contributor covenant.

Communication

Lexicon Community communicates through three channels:

  • The Lexicon Community blog: long-form content, with a companion discussion topic on the forum for every post.
  • The Lexicon Community category on the Atmosphere Community Discourse instance: proposals, feedback, working-group coordination, and discussion.
  • The official @lexicon.community account: news, announcements, updates, and relevant posts.

These are the only channels for official communication, along with direct communication from a lexicon.community email address. Community discussion and engagement is encouraged through the blog, the forum, and feed posts.

Any comments, opinions, or writings of Technical Steering Committee members and contributors are their own and not of Lexicon Community unless explicitly indicated within the writing at the time.

Infrastructure

Lexicon Community provides and operates:

  • An identity used for community organizing: @lexicon.community.
  • An identity used for lexicon publishing and resolution: @lexicons.lexicon.community (see the publishing and resolution guide on the blog).
  • Ownership of the lexicon.community domain, including its registration and DNS services.
  • A git repository used to coordinate lexicon schema development and contributions: tangled.org/lexicon.community/lexicons.
  • A website used for community organizing, governance transparency, and AT Protocol lexicon schema advocacy: lexicon.community.

Contributor guide and covenant

Anyone can contribute to the Lexicon Community, and there are guidelines that everyone must follow. See the contributing guide and the contributor covenant. Community members who refuse to adhere to them may be expelled from the project.

Changelog

2026-07-26
Amended following the restructuring: working groups become self-forming (no TSC vote to begin; the TSC's gate is pull request approval), the separate "collaborator" role is removed (there are TSC members and the community, nothing in between), official communication is consolidated to the blog, the forum category, the @lexicon.community account, and direct lexicon.community email, the decision quorum is defined (at least half of participating TSC members affirm; Nick Gerakines tie-breaks), and the monthly meeting is instituted. An infrastructure section lists what the organization provides and operates. This document's home moved from the governance repository to this site.
2025-03-10
Updated governance adopted: working groups, the consent-seeking decision process, the contributor guide, and the contributor covenant.
2024-11-30
First public draft of the governance model.